Fowey

Noted in Lysons (1806-1833) as one of a group of remarkable fonts in this county. Described in Cox & Harvey (1907) as "a handsome cup-shaped Norman font [but listed in C&H (ibid.) as Early English], rather small for the church, which is strikingly like that of Bishopsteignton in Devon" [ill. of the Bishopsteignton font in C&H (1907]. Cox (1912) lists this as a 13th-century font made of "dark Catacleuse stone, sometimes mistaken for Purbeck", though, later in the same source, Cox writes: "Circular Norm[an] font of Catacleuse stone, 29 in. in diameter and 38 in. high, on new base, is beautifully carved with band of double-star ornament round rim, and with a continuous deeply cut pattern of seven-leaved foliations round rim." [NB: Dr. John L. Symonds, of Cronulla, NSW, Australia, sent BSI a citation from S.V. Daniell's The Story of Cornwall's Churches (Truro: Tor Mark Press, [s.d.]), in which Daniell describes the fonts at Feock, Fowey and Ladock as being similar and "probably from the same hand". The WEB site for Cornwall-online [cf. ChurchNotes for URL] describes the font as a survivor of the Norman church of ca. 1150, with an unfinished part left as it was at the death of the carver, and the material as "hard elvan from a quarry near Padstow". Noted in Pevsner (1970): "Font. Norman, of Catacleuse stone, with rosettes in circles and an upper border of crossed zigzag lines. Good workmanship. The same workshop supplied very similar fonts to Ladock, Feock, and St. Mewan." A drawing of this font by Victorian architect William Bassett-Smith [aka William Smith] (1831-1901) made a pencil drawing on 2 September 1859 [NB: the drawing was up for sale on eBay on 24 October 2006]